No, really:
I have been sitting here with two Stegosaurus models for 20 minutes now, and I just can’t figure it out. How did these dinosaurs — bristling with spikes and plates — go about making more dinosaurs without skewering each other?
Stegosaurus has become an icon of the mystery surrounding dinosaur sex. Dinosaurs must have mated, but just how they did so has puzzled paleontologists for more than 100 years. Lacking much hard evidence, scientists have come up with all kinds of speculations: In his 1906 paper describing Tyrannosaurus rex, for instance, paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn proposed that male tyrant dinosaurs used their minuscule arms for “grasping during copulation.” Others forwarded similar notions about the function of the thumb-spikes on Iguanodon hands. These ideas eventually fell out of favor — perhaps due to embarrassment as much as anything else — but the question remained. How can we study the sex lives of animals that have been dead for millions upon millions of years?
H/T to Maggie Koerth-Baker, who writes: “You’ve really got to read this entire article. Out loud. To someone you love. If they’re the kind of lover who wants to know about prehistoric mating rituals, the dino-sex theories of Victorian paleontologists, or how to sex a fossil, they’ll thank you. (And if they aren’t that kind of lover, well. Maybe it’s time to re-think the relationship.)”
